Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

[Patrick]

As some of you may remember I have taken delivery of a new Dell computer.
It came with 2 Gig Ram.
I had already got a spare 1Gig of the correct type and spec so I purchased another to give me 4Gig.
After installing only 3Gig is being recognised, naturally I thought duff memory, but no changing it round proved it OK, next it must be one of the slots but again no changing things round proved the slots to be OK.
In BIOS the memory is recognised, so the problem must be with Vista.

Anyone got some thoughts.

Patrick

[Archangel]

Re: Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

As some of you may remember I have taken delivery of a new Dell computer.
It came with 2 Gig Ram.
I had already got a spare 1Gig of the correct type and spec so I purchased another to give me 4Gig.
After installing only 3Gig is being recognised, naturally I thought duff memory, but no changing it round proved it OK, next it must be one of the slots but again no changing things round proved the slots to be OK.
In BIOS the memory is recognised, so the problem must be with Vista.

Anyone got some thoughts.

Patrick

1. Leave that memory stick that is not recognizable in place and take all the rest 3 off.
2. Start the PC.
3. If the memory is still not recognized, replace that memory sim with another one in the same slot again.
4. Start the PC again.
5. If it is recognized this time, add one new memory sim at a time and restart the PC again and so forth.

Is that memory you bought exactly the same brand, type and have same specifications like the one you had spare?
Memories, while might be of same type might slightly differ in specifications (usually CAS Latency, which might create a conflict).


George

[rogleale]

Re: Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

If you are using Vista 32 bit you will only be able to use at most 3.2 GB. To get the full 4 GB into play the 64 bit OS is needed. It is a problem of 32 bit memory addresses. There is a KB article on Microsoft explaining this.

Roger

[Patrick]

Re: Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

If you are using Vista 32 bit you will only be able to use at most 3.2 GB. To get the full 4 GB into play the 64 bit OS is needed. It is a problem of 32 bit memory addresses. There is a KB article on Microsoft explaining this.

Roger

Thanks George and Roger for your replies.

I had done much that you suggested George and established nothing wrong with the memory or any of the slots, and as I said in my original post the BIOS recognises the memory. Yes, both new sticks are of the same brand and are the correct specification, in this respect they match the two original sticks be it they are of a different brand from two original.

Roger can you point me more precisely at the article you are referring, is it on the internet if so where? Also did it indicate a update to correct it? It seems to me rather a fundamental flaw for software that's been in the making for 8 years.

Patrick

[coupekid]

Re: Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

Thanks George and Roger for your replies.

I had done much that you suggested George and established nothing wrong with the memory or any of the slots, and as I said in my original post the BIOS recognises the memory. Yes, both new sticks are of the same brand and are the correct specification, in this respect they match the two original sticks be it they are of a different brand from two original.

Roger can you point me more precisely at the article you are referring, is it on the internet if so where? Also did it indicate a update to correct it? It seems to me rather a fundamental flaw for software that's been in the making for 8 years.

Patrick

Hi Patrick,

There is lots on the internet regarding this, here is the KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

Good luck!

[Patrick]

Re: Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

Hi Patrick,

There is lots on the internet regarding this, here is the KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

Good luck!

Hi Ben

I have read the report, not being sufficiently technical it's double-dutch to me.
I understand enough to know that I have bought a computer that will support 4Gig of RAM or possibly even 8, but the operating system will only support 3Gig.
Does this mean if I upgrade Vista to the 64bit version it will recognise the full 4 Gig. That begs the question will the computer support 64 bit Vista, if it will
what benefits can I expect that are genuinely useful.

I think a word with Dell might be in order to get their slant on the situation.

Patrick

[rogleale]

Re: Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

It is probably not only Vista at fault Patrick, as the KB article says in the 'Workaround" paragraph, the usage of the RAM also depends on some of the installed hardware, eg motherboard, CPU, etc. I don't know enough about the specs of your computer to see if this info applies to it or not.
If your machine supports the 64 bit Vista you could go for that, but be aware that drivers for 64 bit OS's are very hard to find, and you may find that some of your hardware would no longer work.
As a comment from my own experience - I doubled my RAM from 1GB to 2GB expecting a big improvement for the speed of Photoshop, but with measured results before and after showing a less than 10% speed gain on memory intensive actions I was quite disappointed. Going to an Athlon 64x2 (Dual core CPU) I clocked a 40% speed gain!

Roger

[Ian]

Re: Is anyone able to offer a word of advice.

It is probably not only Vista at fault Patrick, as the KB article says in the 'Workaround" paragraph, the usage of the RAM also depends on some of the installed hardware, eg motherboard, CPU, etc. I don't know enough about the specs of your computer to see if this info applies to it or not.
If your machine supports the 64 bit Vista you could go for that, but be aware that drivers for 64 bit OS's are very hard to find, and you may find that some of your hardware would no longer work.
As a comment from my own experience - I doubled my RAM from 1GB to 2GB expecting a big improvement for the speed of Photoshop, but with measured results before and after showing a less than 10% speed gain on memory intensive actions I was quite disappointed. Going to an Athlon 64x2 (Dual core CPU) I clocked a 40% speed gain!

Roger

I think the main benefit of extra RAM once you have a reasonable amount (like 1GB) is stability when running several big appliations at the same time. Say, Photoshop, Word, Outlook, etc.

One app I run is seriously memory hungry - Adobe GoLive. I often have to shut apps down in able to get this to run.

Ian